Before and after D-Day: Color photos from England and France, 1944

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Photos:Before and after D-Day: Color photos from England and France, 1944

Before and after D-Day: In color – A U.S. Army chaplain kneels next to a wounded soldier to administer the eucharist and last rites, France, 1944.

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Photos:Before and after D-Day: Color photos from England and France, 1944

Before and after D-Day: In color – An American tank crew takes a breather on the way through the town of Avranches, Normandy, summer 1944.

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Photos:Before and after D-Day: Color photos from England and France, 1944

Before and after D-Day: In color – "We thought it was going to be murder, but it wasn't. To show you how easy it was, I ate my bar of chocolate. In every other operational trip, I sweated so much the chocolate they gave us melted in my breast pocket." -- Frank Scherschel describing his experiences photographing the Normandy invasion from the air before he joined Allied troops heading inland. Above: GIs search ruined homes in western France after D-Day.

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Photos:Before and after D-Day: Color photos from England and France, 1944

Before and after D-Day: In color – "All the civilized world loves France and Paris. Americans share this love with a special intimacy born in the kinship of our revolutions, our ideas and our alliances in two great wars." -- LIFE magazine on the relationship between the U.S. and its longtime European ally.

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Photos:Before and after D-Day: Color photos from England and France, 1944

Before and after D-Day: In color – A church service is conducted in dappled sunlight, France, 1944.

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Photos:Before and after D-Day: Color photos from England and France, 1944

Before and after D-Day: In color – "Paris is like a magic sword in a fairy tale -- a shining power in those hands to which it rightly belongs, in other hands tinsel and lead. Whenever the City of Light changes hands, Western civilization shifts its political balance. So it has been for seven centuries; so it was in 1940; so it was last week." -- LIFE after the French capital was liberated in August 1944.